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October 2015 Policy&Practice 35
PAYCHECK continued from page 6
their individual and family needs.
Workforce engagement e orts at
the macro and micro levels must be
intentionally designed and imple-
mented in ways that focus on creating
career pathways for families, not
just to employment, but, to gainful
employment and the resulting positive
outcomes that benefit the whole family.
Gainful Employment and
Independence is one of four key
outcome areas APHSA seeks to
impact through a transformed human
service system. Our work is focused
on supporting individual and family
capacity, stabilizing families and their
budgets, putting people on a path away
from dependency and toward self-
su ciency, and providing them with
necessary preparation and sustainable
skills to succeed in an increasingly
volatile and competitive economy.
This approach supports the many
ways in which work contributes to
quality of life. It is characterized by a
number of components important to
building individual capacity and sus-
tainability in the workplace, including
not only income and a safe working
environment but also engagement and
involvement, deriving purpose in the
work performed, respect and appre-
ciation for diversity, and a sense of
performing well and achieving goals.
Gainful employment is one of the
surest and most long-lasting means to
lifelong independence and well-being
for both parents and their children.
In the coming months, APHSA will
be launching a new initiative, the
Center for Workforce Engagement
(CWE), which has been established to
identify and promote policies, funding
structures, practice models, and other
resources that can best support and
enable gainful employment and inde-
pendence for individuals and their
families. Look for a full introduction to
the CWE in the next issue of Policy &
Practice.
Kerry Desjardins is a policy associate
at APHSA.
Charlie Lucke was a summer 2015
policy intern for APHSA.
Reference Notes
. Elliot, M. ( ). Impact of work,
family, and welfare receipt on women’s
self-esteem in young adulthood. Social
Psychology Quarterly, ( ), – .
. Grimm-Thomas, K., and Perry-Jenkins,
M. ( ). All in a day’s work: Job
experiences, self-esteem, and fathering in
working class families. Family Relations,
( ), – ; Berg, P., Frost, A. C.
( ). Dignity at work for low wage,
low skill service workers. Relations
Industrielles, ( ), – .
. Elliot, ; Grimm-Thomas & Perry-
Jenkins, .
. Grimm-Thomas & Perry-Jenkins, .
. Gomez, L. I., and Thetford, T. ( ).
Microbusinesses, gainful jobs. Washington,
DC: FIELD at the Aspen Institute.
. Three out of four of the survey
respondents also highlighted their
organization’s reliance on “pro-
gram-specific applications/intake
processes to determine eligibility
and enroll program participants”
(Regulative). Another percent of
the respondents added that while they
are able to use cross-boundary data,
programmatic enrollment is handled
di erently by di erent partners
(Collaborative).
. Finally, when asked about the
status of their organization’s current
workflows, all of the respondents
selected either the Regulative
response; i.e., “Workflow processes
are rules-driven and designed to
deliver a specific output —determi-
nation of eligibility, benefit level to be
provided, etc.,” or the Collaborative
one, which was the same as the
Regulative except that the workflows
are “updated to build in e ciencies
through collaboration with other
programs.”
While these responses are well
within today’s typical workflow
goals, the non-selected Integrative
(“Workflows are streamlined, seam-
less and completely integrated…
designed to achieve e ciencies and
outcomes identified by program par-
ticipants and the enterprise”) or the
Generative response, which was the
same as the Integrative one except
the workflow processes (“…also
benefit from the input of stakeholders
internal and external to the enterprise,
community partners and program
participants—all of whom have been
key in assuring the processes are
designed to achieve shared outcomes”)
were not chosen by any of the orga-
nizations as characteristic of their
current workflow.
In summary, while many of the
responding organizations have set
their goals on achieving a holistic,
program participant–oriented vision
focused more on outputs designed to
address the social determinants of
health than on inputs, they continue
to be challenged by the absence of
technologies within their programs,
and the lack of a helpful infrastructure,
including workflows, to help them get
there.
These findings, together with
other survey results from our final
report, can be found on APHSA’s web
site under the heading, “National
Collaborative on Integration of Health
and Human Services.”
Megan Lape is the assistant director
for the National Collaborative for
Integration of Health and Human
Services.
Reference Notes
. OMB Circular A- (Section C. ) and
Section . of the superseding
“Uniform Administrative Requirements,
Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements
for Federal Awards” ( CFR issued
December , ).
.
aphsa/pdfs/NWI/FINAL_NWI%
Analytics% Capability%
Roadmap_ . . .pdf
.
dam/aphsa/pdfs/NWI/APHSA%
Maturity% Model_ % _Final-
AP_ % % .pdf